Communicating with family, friends, business contacts and social networking contacts can take a number of forms including text messaging, instant messaging, status updates, blogs and phone calls. The number of contacts that an individual may have can number in the hundreds or thousands. This makes it very difficult for the individual to keep up to date with the majority of his relationships. As a result, the individual's relatives, friends, business contacts and social networking contacts can be visiting the individual's home town, vacationing at the same location, or attending the same conference as the individual, but the individual will be unaware of these circumstances. An opportunity is thereby missed to meet with these friends, family and business or social contacts, despite the common use of social networking services by all parties, because the activities or status messages of each party did not reach the other in a timely manner or they were unnoticed amongst the numerous other status messages or similar communicated information.
Even those individuals who are aware of their proximity to their family, friends, business contacts or social networking contacts can have difficulty in coordinating activities and meeting with these proximate individuals. Location tracking services can enable an individual to locate some of their contacts, but then separate services must be used to contact them, which is inconvenient. Also these tracking services must be actively monitored by the individual and are limited to use with other individuals who are also actively using them or enabling them. These tracking services often utilize global positioning services in cellular phones, which can quickly drains the battery life of the phone. As a result many individuals do not leave the associated applications running on their devices, thereby undermining the utility of these tracking services due to their infrequent use and stale information.